c. 1999 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ As Congress struggles to put behind the long and bitter impeachment process and get back to its more normal daily business of passing bills and making laws, two senators, accompanied by a handful of clergy, Thursday (Feb. 25) urged healing and cooperation between politicians.”For the past year, our time and attention has been taken up largely by the investigation and impeachment trial of the president. That is now over,”Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told a handful of senators, clergy and others gathered at an early morning”reconciliation gathering”in the Capitol.”We have been jurors, triers of fact, and judges,”he added.”Now we need to be reconcilers. I look forward to engaging in this work with each of you.” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who, with Brownback, co-sponsored the event, urged leaders of both parties to acknowledge that the impeachment proceedings were not a success for either party. “We in the Senate went through a very troubling experience,”he said.”The gap between us and the people has grown wider.””The time for reconciliation is now,”he added.”We need to pull together and face the future with a collaborative spirit that encourages reconciliation and renewal.” Co-sponsoring the event with Brownback and Lieberman was the Center for Jewish and Christian Values, a public policy organization the two co-chair, and its parent organization, Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

Coming from different political and religious backgrounds, Brownback, a Christian and Republican, and Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew and a Democrat, are symbolic of the center’s main goal of building bridges between disparate voices, said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the international fellowship.

Eckstein himself addressed the gathering, which included Sens. John Ashcroft, R-Mo.; Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii; Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.; Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.; James Inhofe, R-Okla.;”Kit”Christopher Bond, R-Mo.; Charles Robb, D-Va.; and Ted Stevens, R-Ark.

Speaking prior to the event, Eckstein told Religion News Service the impeachment ordeal’s heaviest toll has been levied on leaders’ ability to trust one another.”Trust of one another”has been lost, said Eckstein.”And I am not just talking about trust of the president here, but across the aisle. What we need is healing _ and I am not suggesting that we homogenize. It is possible to maintain our convictions, while at the same time building bridges so that we are not polarized to the point of being immobilized.”America is a mosaic and we each play our unique part in making it into a totality and bringing a sense of wholeness to it,”said Eckstein.

The belief that Republicans and Democrats can and should build relationships with each other despite differing political views underscores a movement which has gained momentum among many faith-based groups on Capitol Hill.

From the Interfaith Alliance, a liberal alternative to the Christian Coalition, to the Park Ridge Center for the study of Health, Faith and Ethics, numerous groups have recently hosted events in Washington extolling the benefits of civility and compromise while decrying the divisive rhetoric and behavior in politics and society.

That same goal also lies at the heart of the upcoming _ and controversial _ bipartisan retreat of House members in Hershey, Pa. Event organizers hope the retreat will offer politicians and their families an opportunity to see each other in a setting where they presumably have more in common.

Other participants in Thursday’s reconciliation gathering included Roman Catholic Archbishop Justin Rigali of St. Louis; the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches; the Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie, Chaplain to the U.S. Senate; Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; and gospel singer Witley Phipps.

DEA END ROCKWOOD